Poverty and Happiness

No, I do not think that being rich is necessary to be happy.
Based on the Happiness Planet Index(HPI),  China's HPI of 44.7 is higher than Singapore's HPI of 39.8. The index is an efficiency measure, it ranks countries on how many long and happy lives they produce per unit of environmental input. The Index also uses global data on life expectancy, experienced well-being and Ecological Footprint to calculate this.
If being rich is essential to be happy then why with such a high economy statue of Singapore's, it still has a lower HPI than China's?
Well, I think that being richer, means to have a higher expectation on the standards of living. This will lead to more amount of stress as you need to work even harder to satisfy the condition.
Based on my research, I found that Singapore's average working hours is higher than the average working hours of employees globally which includes China. From this, I can infer that efforts must be put in by the citizens in order to boost the country's economy and with more efforts put in, it will also be more tiring and stress and resulted in low happiness index.

In my opinion, I do not think that we are a happy country,  although we are relatively prosperous compared to other countries. As our happiness is not dependent only on the economy. Happiness can depend on several other factors. Such as, Singapore has limited land spaces and we are also the most densely populated country on the planet. Thus, the housings are all clustered together. And based on studies, results have shown that when animals are housed together in closet proximity with little spaces to roam, they will become less happy. In addition, Singapore has strict laws and rules to obey, for example, no chewing gums are allowed in the country. So these small little things can vary a country's happiness index significantly.
Thus, I feel that happiness does not depend on how rich you are.